Below Sea Level
Simon Scott
12k Records.
Last year’s Top 20
Albums list played out over a mountainous event in my personal life – the
uphill anticipation and aftermath serenity bookmarking my September wedding – and,
as such, the event informed the criteria of several top listens. Although
bringing far less intensity, 2012’s big event – my moving away from Ottawa –
still left lingering traces over the year in music, classifying records in old
or new geographies.
Since no record on SCQ’s
year-end list approaches the investment Below Sea Level has in geography, it’s
fitting that Simon Scott’s ode to The Fens in Eastern England so prominently
scored my Ottawa farewell. Early spins of this record, occurring about a month
from our packing-up and departure, encapsulated my last weeks of walking to
work, taking in the sun-drenched parks and sidewalks of a town unknowingly on
the cusp of a drought, while hearing the insects, birds and plant-life resident
to an area thousands of kilometers away. Sometimes Scott manipulates the
found-sounds into electronic rhythms that form the bedrock of his ambient
movements, other times he lets the various organic sounds collaborate with his
tones as they like, improvised. But when Scott fully confesses his love of the
Fens through nostalgic guitar-work, it speaks to attachments we can hardly
enunciate – the places we’ve left pieces of ourselves.
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